Viking Lives

In this episode, Gudrid sets out with her husband Karlsefni on an expedition to make a new Viking settlement in North America, the land they know as Vinland. Three ships, with 65 people, livestock and provisions, cross the North Atlantic and eventually find their way to the rich, temperate land that Leif Eriksson had spoken of. The new Viking colony seems destined to succeed, until they encounter the local people, who are unhappy about the presence of these interlopers.

Gudrid Thorbjarnardottir was the daughter of an Icelandic chieftain, who was very likely the most well-travelled human being of her time. In this first episode, Gudrid’s family settles in the new Viking colony on Greenland. The settlement is struggling, and a seer named Thorbjorg comes to prophesy its future. Even though Gudrid is a Christian, she assists the seer in performing her pagan rite … who then foretells a future for Gudrid that will take her across the world.

This is the first in a series of episodes following the Viking explorers and settlers who sailed west into the unknown and formed settlements in the New World. We begin with Erik the Red, who was sent into exile from Iceland for his crimes, and sailed all the way to the island of Greenland, where he founded two Viking colonies in the tenth century.

At the turn of the first millennium, the Viking kingdoms of Scandinavia were abandoning the old Norse religion and officially adopting Christianity.Norway sent missionaries into Iceland and in the year 1000 AD, a meeting was held at Iceland’s open-air parliament, the Althing, to decide whether they too would become baptised Christians. But tensions were running high between the converts and those loyal to the old gods. And so the decision fell to one man: the lawspeaker Thorgeir Thorkelsson… who had to find a way to avert civil war.

This is the second part of the story of Hallgerd Hoskuldsdottir, known as Hallgerd Longlegs. Hallgerd, already widowed twice, went to the annual assembly at Thingvellir, where she met the handsome and charismatic Gunnar of Hlidarendi, who had just returned to Iceland after finding great success in Norway. The two were considered the most attractive people on the island, and they were instantly and powerfully attracted to each other. They settled on Gunnar’s farm in the south of Iceland, but Hallgerd’s arrival upset the settled friendships in the area, and her fierce temper brought both of them into a deadly feud.

This is the first of two episodes on the life of Hallgerd Hoskuldsdottir: the most dangerous woman in tenth century Iceland. Hallgerd was a striking figure; she was tall, with hair so long it could cloak her whole body. She was married three times, and was both a victim and an instigator of violence. This episode follows her childhood and her first two arranged marriages, in which she’s both formed and deformed by her pride, and the Viking honour culture that surrounds her.

This episode tells the story of a Viking named Hrafnkel, a powerful chieftan who lived in an isolated part of Iceland. Hrafnkel was rich and arrogant. One day he killed a shepherd for mishandling his most prized horse, which he associated with a Norse god.The result was a bitter feud between clans that Hrafnkel lost...but then won in murderous circumstances.

The first episode of series three of Viking Lives comes to you from Oxford in the UK. Our Viking is an unknown man, killed in the St. Brice’s Day massacre that took place there in the year 1002 AD. This was a murderous attack on a community of Norse settlers in Oxfordshire, incited by the English king Aethelred the Unready. The bones of the slaughtered victims were tipped into a pit on the grounds of St. John’s College, where they lay for a thousand years until discovered by chance in 2008.Richard & Kári came to see Angie Bolton, Curator of Archaeology at Oxfordshire County, who is custodian and caretaker of these bones, including one individual identified as SK1756, the man we call the Lost Brother.